


Nothing Like Summer In The City

by FyrMaiden



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M, Meet-Cute, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 03:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7026502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine only lives by taking the breath and the energy from the men he kisses. It's lonely, and he's tired. And then there's a boy on a train, and he's different somehow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Like Summer In The City

**Author's Note:**

> The _what_ of what Blaine is is inspired by Lamia from Neil Gaiman's 'Neverwhere'. You don't have to be familiar with her to read it, though. Written for a prompt on [tumblr](http://vampireisabitstrong.tumblr.com/tagged/fyrmaiden-fic).

Blaine meets Kurt on a train. It’s late, so late it’s almost early, and Blaine is sitting quietly in an almost entirely unoccupied car, tucking his fingers into his armpits as he wills his body to use what little energy he has more wisely, more slowly. It’s futile, though. His fingertips are turning grey, and soon the grey will go black. He sighs, and his breath mists around him. He needs to feed, needs to top up the energy his body doesn’t - can’t - create on its own. It’s why he’s still above when most of his kind have disappeared into the tunnels and secret places that exist below the city. He’s been in clubs and bars all night, trying to find the perfect target. Someone young and lithe and beautifully _alive_ , but it has been futile. His dead fingertips and the sluggish thump of his heart are testament to that.

“It’s cold,” a voice says, somewhere to his left. He looks up and around, and finds a pair of eyes that shine like ice, blue and clear and piercing.

“Sorry?” he replies, and the owner of the voice stands and moves down the carriage, closer to him. Blaine watches him warily as he sits in the seat directly opposite him. He pulls fingerless gloves from the pocket of his bag, tugs them up over his hands and then rearranges the cuffs of his peacoat.

“It’s cold down here tonight,” the man repeats, his voice reminiscent of somewhere else. Not a native, Blaine thinks. Maybe there’s no one who will miss him? But no - he’s dressed impeccably, the fabric of his pants is expensive and Blaine recognises the brand of his bag. Someone loves him. Someone would notice if he didn’t come home -

Blaine finds himself staring at a gloved hand. “I’m Kurt,” the man says, and Blaine responds on auto pilot.

“Blaine,” he says, too slow to formulate his usual lies. Something about the man in front of him inspires his honesty, anyway. He doesn’t take the proffered hand, though, and he doesn’t say anything more. He just stares at Kurt, and wonders whether Kurt would share a kiss. Just the little he would get from a kiss. Enough to restore the colour to his hands. He’s kissed a lot of boys, he knows where to stop, how much is enough. He just wants to keep hearing the thump of his heart, to see his hands go from grey to pink as his blood flows through them.

Kurt, in turn, studies him. He is quiet, and his neck is long. Blaine imagines pressing his warm lips to the hinge of his jaw sometime. He lowers his gaze to the floor, pushes the thought away. The men he kisses always say yes when he asks, and Kurt is a stranger on a train.

And then Kurt moves to sit beside him, his thigh pressing long and warm against Blaine’s own. “I know what you are,” he whispers, and Blaine looks up at him and blinks.

“What I am?” Blaine asks, and Kurt nods, turns the corners of his mouth up in a smile.

“You can kiss me,” he says quietly, and Blaine doesn’t need to ask permission again. He’s starving but he still moves with a speed that the decaying state of his body belies. He presses his mouth to Kurt’s, plans to take enough to leave Kurt alive but Kurt tastes sweet and strong, and so he keeps taking and taking instead. In his chest, the thump of his heart growing louder and faster, his body warming in ways he doesn’t remember it feeling in far too long, and still he keeps his mouth pressed to Kurt’s, swallowing him in long desperate gulps. He kisses Kurt deep and hard, and only pulls away when he realises that Kurt is kissing him back, his hands tangling in Blaine’s coat and cracking through the gel in his hair, strong and just as hungry as he is. Blaine pulls away and stares down into the bright blue of Kurt’s eyes, and Kurt smiles.

“Usually I’d suggest dinner,” he quips, and then, “Funny. Is it warmer now? It feels warmer.”

Blaine sits back in the seat beside him, and stares at his hands, the pink flushing through them warming his skin to its natural tan. “What are you?” he asks, and Kurt’s lips quirk up into a smile.

“Different?” he suggest, and then, “Better?”

Blaine doesn’t say anything further. He sits with his hands in his lap, and stares at the stations as they pass. Kurt says, eventually, “This is me,” and collects his bag and his gloves. He glances back at Blaine as he steps off of the train.

“I know,” he says, softly. “I’m serious. I know what you are. You can always find me here. If you need me.”

And he’s gone, the doors closing behind him. Blaine listens to the sound of his heart thumping in his chest, and leaves the train silently in the dark of the tunnels, heading further down, further beneath, into the places where he is known.

 

He tries to put Kurt from his mind. He tries not to think about him, or the kaleidoscope whirl of his eyes, or the way his life force had felt on his tongue, how long it had kept his heart beating, his skin warm. He tries not to think about how quickly his body burns through the dregs he claims from the men who wander into the heart of his world, who can be tempted by his smile and the offer of his hand and the warmth his body can offer in the loneliness of invisibility. He sees them, and, in turn, they give him everything they have, their last breaths offering thanks.

Those men, though, are infrequent and unsatisfactory. He must head above, out of the tunnels and deep places, to feed properly. He picks up the trains at his usual spots, boarding them fast and silent between stations, alighting at quiet ones, brushing the dust and stasis of his world from his shoulders. He checks the perfect parting of his hair in a polished subway tile, and straightens the hem of his skinny suit jacket, and jumps when a voice he knows tells him he looks just fine.

Kurt.

Kurt is sitting on a bench, his bag across his lap, laughter in his eyes and curling up the corners of his mouth. “Whoever you’re looking for,” he says, “They’re never going to turn down whatever you ask them for.”

If Blaine had the energy left to blush, he knows he would be flushed to the tips of his ears. Kurt pats the bench beside him. “You’re cold,” he says. “Let me help you feel more human.”

He stresses _human_. Blaine blinks, but there’s an almost magnetic pull. He takes the seat beside Kurt, and Kurt shivers.

“You’re like ice,” he says. “Here. Let me -”

He tastes like summer smells, Blaine thinks. He tastes like late sunset and high pollen, and Blaine knows, if it were an option, that he could live on Kurt forever. Kurt’s warm lips, and the flush of pink in his ears, and the wisdom that shimmers in his eyes when he opens his own.

A train pulls into the station as Blaine breaks away, and Kurt stands, boards it with a smile. “Happy hunting, Blaine,” he says, and there’s no judgement, no inflection. For all the world, he sounds like he means it.

The doors close and Blaine turns and walks up out of the subway, Kurt’s blessing as warm in his blood as his breath is.

 

In the back seats of taxis, with a stranger’s fingers curling between his, with warm lips on his cool skin, Blaine sees Kurt’s eyes when he closes his own. He’s lead into small apartments, undressed with hot hands and desperate need, and he fucks like he’s trying to forget. He loses himself in the warmth of hot bodies between his thighs and between his lips, and tries not to think of how very much energy this search for connection steals from him.

Even then, he doesn’t kiss the men he sleeps with, not on the mouth. Not often. Not usually. He gluts himself until his skin is flushed and his pulse is steady in his wrists and his groin, and then he hunts for something different, something to ease the loneliness of forever. He hunts for the heat he craves between his thighs, hunts with his libido and with carnal desire, and finds it in strong hands gripping his hips, his own thighs powerful against blood flushed skin as they push up into him. He closes his mouth over the steady thump of their hearts in their throats, over their nipples and their collarbones and their shoulders, sucks their fingers between his lips and sinks his mouth over their erect cocks as his own fingers push inside of them. He licks and tastes every inch of skin, but he rarely lets his lips brush their mouths.

It’s been decades, and he still doesn’t know how to bear the loss.

Until -

There’s one man, his eyes bright blue and his mouth quick to smile, who reminds Blaine of Kurt. The tips of his ears are pointed like he’s fae, like he belongs in Blaine’s world, not up here, and Blaine finds himself kissing him, his ass pressed cold against the iron of the fire escape they’re standing on, drawing his life into his own body. He’s grey, the other man, when Blaine pulls away, and his eyelids are heavy, and Blaine balks, stutters, and clambers back inside, grabbing his things and tearing down the stairs and into the street just as he gets his arms through the sleeves of his jacket. He knows, in that instant, what makes Kurt different, why he’s special. Blaine vanishes into the dark of the city below and lets the energy leach out of him entirely before he ventures back into the subway, in search of Kurt and the truth.

 

He finds Kurt on the same train. He sits alone in an end carriage, with headphones in his ears and his eyes staring blankly at the dark of the tunnel walls. Blaine almost thinks he can hear the creak of his bones as he lowers himself into a seat opposite him. Kurt blinks slowly, and the corners of his mouth turn up.

“I was starting to think you’d left,” he says, his voice soft and a little high. Blaine shakes his head, or tries to. He’s hungry, his dead heart silent in his chest. It takes a long time for his thoughts to coalesce and his muscles to comply. Kurt moves to sit beside him, and Blaine worries that the stasis of time around him will turn Kurt as grey as he is, even though that’s not how it works. He can’t make Kurt like him, not even if he wanted to. Kurt takes one his hands in his own, massages the cold black of his fingers, and clicks his tongue against the back of his teeth.

“I tried looking for you,” he says. “When you weren’t in your usual places. You weren’t down here, and I never saw you in the clubs.”

Blaine blinks, uncomprehending. “In the clubs?” he says, and Kurt ducks his head, the pompadour of his hair bouncing slightly. Blaine wants to touch, and doesn’t quite dare.

“You’re not a subtle as you think you are,” Kurt tells him. “Remember Blaine, I know what you are. And once you get close enough, there’s nothing about you that’s human.”

Blaine wants to disagree - there’s a visceral part of him, carnal and wanton, that is very much human. The part of him that wants to feel Kurt’s skin against his own, that wants to share his life with him, that part is human.

“What am I?” he says instead, and Kurt’s laugh is like the fall of rain.

“I don’t know your word,” he says, “But I suppose my word is vampire.”

The train screams to a stop in the middle of the tunnel, and the lights around them flicker and flash. In the moments of darkness, Blaine feels Kurt lean into him and press his lips to his mouth, and he kisses him back as the sweet rush of life flows into him, restarting his heart and burning bright as the lights around them as the train shudders back into motion.

 

Blaine’s life above, out of the tunnels, is different. In ways he’s rarely felt before, he understands the need for sleep. He feels the days come and go, and the thump of his heart, the rush of blood through his veins. He kisses Kurt with a passion and an abandon he’s never been allowed, and feels the rush of _life_ with every touch of their lips.

“What are you?” he asks him again, for the hundredth time, the thousandth. They’re sitting on the fire escape outside of Kurt’s apartment. Kurt holds a mug of coffee between his palms, but they’re not really cold. He blows into the mug, thoughtful and quiet, and then he smiles.

“I’m not whatever you’re thinking,” he says. His voice is quiet, but Blaine hears him anyway, over the roar of the traffic below and the blast of horns and sirens. “I’m not fae. My mom knew about the city below, though. She learned from her grandmother, who knew a man like you once. He took her with him, and she would tell my mom stories of women in antique gowns whose dresses made patterns in the dust that their feet didn’t. She told stories of people trapped in time, who didn’t live except for in the brief hours they could steal from the lips of others. My mom thought they were just stories, I guess, but she enjoyed them anyway. And she would share them with me. When I was a child, I had such dreams - I imagined going down into the city below, of finding out whether there were men there, too, with beautiful coats and dust in their lungs.”

He pauses and wraps his hands tighter around his mug, sighs softly.

“I never went,” he continues. “My mom - she died when I was 8, and before she left, she took me with her to meet a - I guess you’d call him a priest? She had me blessed by this man, anyway. It sounded silly to me, but he promised her that I would never run out of heartbeats. Not until I was old. I have life and some to spare, as it turns out. I’ve been hurt, and I’ve been broken, and I’m still here, stronger and more determined. I’m as human as most everyone else in this city, but I’ve got enough life in me for both of us.”

It sounds like an offer, Blaine thinks, and he leans in to Kurt, presses a kiss to his temple. “And me,” he says softly. “How did you know?”

Kurt laughs and turns his head, presses a chaste kiss to Blaine’s mouth. “I saw you on the trains,” he says. “Sixty years out of time at least, and cold. Mom’s grandma remembered that about the man she knew. Whenever she saw him, he would always look grey and feel cold. That’s how you looked, cold and grey and hungry. And I knew. And I knew, too, that I could be your person, if you wanted one. When I saw that you almost exclusive picked men, I thought, maybe I had a chance. And here we are.”

Blaine smiles and takes his mug from him, leads him back inside. In his heart, he knows that he wants to live enough days to see grey in his hair, to see the elasticity of his skin fail and fall. He wants to experience life, and he wants to live each day with Kurt.

It’s Kurt that initiates the kiss, the exchange of energy that keeps Blaine present, and Blaine feels it tingle through him, rushing towards his fingertips and his brain, and he presses into it, holding Kurt against him with a ferocity that maybe should be terrifying.

It may be the beginning of the end for him, but he wants every single second of it to count, starting now.


End file.
